


Third Phase Chief

by Todesengel



Series: Mag7 Bingo [6]
Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-17
Updated: 2011-11-17
Packaged: 2017-10-26 04:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/278687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vin waits for the silent desert to speak.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Phase Chief

He's deep into the thirsting time when the raiding party finds him, mouth dryer than the desert sand around him. Been a day and a half since he last had something to drink – not even a goddamn cactus to chew on, not without a knife on him. No shirt, neither, and his skin burns hot, hot, hotter than the fire. Burns to move, to breathe, and he thinks the shadows high above him are the crows come to eat his eyes. Big damn crows, too.

But they ain't crows of any kind.

He listens to them argue, though he don't know what they're saying. Can't understand a word of it, but he understands the flow well enough, the emotion.

One of the shadows wants to kill him.

One wants to leave him – he ain't their kin, ain't part of their band.

The third one is mostly silent. It's a deep silence, like this goddamn desert; like that other desert, the one of grass and earth and sky. Deep silence, but when it talks, you listen. Silence like that gets broken for a reason.

The shadows come to a decision and when they move out of his vision he thinks he's going to die.

Ain't his time, though, 'cause they comes back and lifts him and he screams, oh how he screams, 'cause his skins so tender. Screams past the dryness of his mouth, past the broken edges of his lips, screams until he can't no more 'cause there ain't nothing left for him to say. He's screamed his pain to the world, to that silence, and he's done.

He's all done.

*

He wakes up in a cool almost-darkness, to a silence that isn't as profound as the one he's left. It's a domestic silence, spiced with smoke and earth and something distinctly animal but unfamiliar.

He listens, quietly, to the silence, to the world. Takes stock of where he is and of all the pains in his body. Takes his time to be alive.

There's a shuffling movement in the silence, and he turns his head, though his neck – his everything – screams when he does so. A woman approaches him – black hair shot through with silver – and touches his face, his neck, his body, smears something on him that cools and soothes the fire of his skin.

He reaches out, touches her hand as she turns, and says, "Paa."

She stares back at him, and he tries again, in English this time. "Water."

"Yes," she says. "Yes."

*

His skin peels away in translucent layers. He's shedding – _like a snake_ , he thinks – and the sun-brown children of this camp laugh at his paleness, and the golden-redness of his new skin. They are Diné, Navajo. They ask him: what are you? What tribe are you from?

He doesn't know how to answer that, anymore. He ain't allowed to be Numinu, according to the white men who took him from that great grass desert. Ain't supposed to speak like his father, or dress like him, or hunt the buffalo herds across the land. But he don't know what he's supposed to do now, or be, or what band he belongs to.

"What's your mother's tribe?" they ask, incessant, curious.

"Tanner," he says, 'cause even with everything else gone, he still knows this, always knows this. And maybe that's what he is now that he's no longer Kwahada. "I'm a Tanner."

"Funny name," one says.

"What part is your tribe from?" says another.

"There," he says, and points East, towards the sun and home.

*

He grows strong in the camp, learns their ways, their tongue. Rides their horses in raids against the white folk. This, at least, is familiar, although they steal sheep instead of horses. He hunts the deer with them, and the mountain lion that threatens the flock, and neither are the buffalo he longs for.

He learns of the coyote of their tribe, and of the lightning tree, and the blessing of corn. At night, he sits and listens to this different desert, learns its noises.

It ain't home.

Ain't all bad, though.

*

It's the slap of wood against string that attracts him to the women and their looms. He watches them weave the warm blankets for the hogan, the big square cloths that will become their clothes. Back and forth the colors go, and on the wooden frame the desert blooms.

"Can I try?" he asks Keybah.

"You're not nadleeh," she laughs. "We weave the blankets that keep you warm, and you tend the sheep so we have the wool we need."

"How do you know I ain't?" he asks, flushing at the neck, his pride rising in him. "Maybe I am nadleeh."

"Oh? You have a second spirit in you?" Keybah sits him down before the loom and hands him the wooden beater and threads. "Like so. See?" Her fingers dance between the strings and another layer of the mountains comes to life. He tries to copy her, but his fingers are clumsy and they tangle the threads.

"Aww, this is stupid," he says and throws down the threads, frustrated and angry and still lost.

Keybah kisses the top of his head. "One spirit is enough for you, little one."

"Yeah," he says. He stands up but doesn't walk away. He watches the women weave, instead, and waits for the silent desert to speak.

**Author's Note:**

> So I suppose the first note should be that if I got anything wrong about the two Native American cultures represented here (Navajo and Comanche) it's all the fault of the internets and me being too lazy to do actual legit research into customs and practices. I have tried to be as accurate and respectful as possible with this fic and hope nobody takes offense. Now that that's out of the way I want to also say that I know I'm futzing the timeline for Navajo weaving patterns a bit here. Third Phase Chief (examples: [here](http://www.navajorugrepair.com/navajorug.htm) and [here](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/157115)) apparently didn't come into play until the 1870s (although at least one internet resource says that it began to appear before then) which is waaaay later than I want to set this fic. See, I'm assuming that Vin's interaction with the Navajo* came prior to their forced removal in 1863/4 to Ft. Sumner. This is based on Vin's statement in _Manhunt_ that his friend from Chanu's tribe was "killed when the Army rounded them up, forced them to the Reservation".
> 
> I am, of course, handwaving away a lot of the inconsistencies between history as presented by the show and reality -- in particular the fact that the Navajo being rounded up were clear on the other side of New Mexico from Texas. But I'm going to assume that there were some Navajo tribes living close-ish to the Texas border given that they did trade/fight with the Plains Indians.
> 
> *I strongly believe that Chanu's people were Navajo, simply because it makes the most sense given the show's geography and the superstitions Vin spouts.


End file.
